Iron & Wine, the work of Sam Beam, makes a long awaited return with his third full-length album The Shepherd's Dog. The follow up to Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) and the Woman King EP (2005), Beam also collaborated with Calexico for the In The Reins mini-album (2005) that saw the two bands embark on extensive touring across the US and Europe into 2006, including an ecstatic sold out show at The Forum in London.A remarkable craftsman - deeply literate, intimate, possessed of unaffected candour, imbuing his songs with pastoral imagery and arcane manners, Sam Beam has become a much loved songwriter and one of the top selling indie artists in the US (Our Endless Numbered Days is at 200K in the US, while The Creek Drank The Cradle, just passed 100K).From the early lo-fi home recordings on his debut, The Creek Drank The Cradle (Beam would record his quiet acoustic songs onto four track late at night, singing in hushed tones so as not to wake the family), Sam Beam has slowly but surely developed his outfit from spare early performances, featuring Patrick McKinney on acoustic guitar or banjo, and his sister Sarah Beam on backing vocals to a full eight piece live band that will tour in October (more details to be announced soon). Previously living in Miami, Beam relocated to just outside Austin, Texas in the last eighteen months. The Shepherd's Dog is the culmination of this gradual process. Ambitious and richly textured, informed by a deep, resonant sensuality, this is an album to return to again and again. In conversations with Beam while mixing The Shepherd's Dog, he confessed to finding spiritual inspiration in Swordfishtrombones, an album that forged a new musical language for Tom Waits. While sounding nothing like Waits' 1983 release, The Shepherd's Dog succeeds in accomplishing a similar cathartic recasting of the artist's intentions. "There wasn't really a theme when writing it," Beam explains, "but there's a chaotic sense to a lot of the lyrics and a lot more aggressive songs. There's a borderline confusion about modern-day America, but at the same time it's not a political record in any way, shape or form." The Shepherd's Dog was recorded by Sam with the assistance of longtime producer Brian Deck and engineer Colin Studebaker, with band members Sarah Beam, Patrick McKinney and EJ Holowicki, and a number of guests including Calexico's Joey Burns, and sometime Lambchop pedal steel player Paul Niehaus. The album was conceived in various phases, mostly in Sam's home studio, then mixed and completed at Engine Studios, Chicago, Illinois The arrangements are kaleidoscopic and lush. The whole album breathes, encompassing a massive swathe of beautifully interwoven musical influences and carefully pitched sounds derived from myriad instruments, quite naturally drawn together by Sam Beam's inviting, honeyed vocal. A painstaking lyricist, Beam portrays in depth narratives with telling details, sometimes Biblical in their scope, within the span of a pop song. This is a weighty, enveloping album, hugely satisfying and more than repaying close and repeated listens. "I tried to do it in three weeks, and it ended up being six months, off and on," Beam admits. "It was happenstance that this particular record ended up taking as long; but it was a serendipitous thing for me. I wanted to make this one more of an epic journey."The album is loaded with seductive rhythms that permeate and undulate, a cornucopia of sounds to tickle the senses, kicking off in fine style with lo-fi gone widescreen sprawl of 'Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car'. 'Carousel' summons a vivid otherworldliness, a heady confit of multilayered vocal harmonies, lavish Fender Rhodes, Vibes and rippling guitar. Which is recognisably Iron and Wine, but the Dub and African percussion percolating through 'Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)' is something else altogether. Almost like Sly & Robbie had stepped behind the mixing desk. 'White Tooth Man' rocks with a desperate, menacing intensity, slide guitar and sitar duelling with racing piano and unwavering tabla percussion. 'Boy with a Coin', the album's first single (due August 27), is darkly playful, a handclap hook tumbling under its cascading melody and backwards guitar textures. Once again reminding us that Sam Beam is the king of constructing textured tunes that one can almost climb into and decipher over time. Another wonderful highlight is 'House by the Sea' with its haunting Larry Adler-esque intro that builds and swoops before the tumultuous finale that clusters and crashes in a wonderful jumbled heap.
With The Shepherd's Dog, Iron and Wine vaults to the top draw of contemporary music makers. This is a tour de force. And while we always knew there was something very special about Sam Beam, we honestly had no idea that he was capable of this. Iron And Wine